Even before Timberline K-8 School opens in the fall, Heritage Middle School and Loma Linda Elementary School will begin sharing an administrative office, library and front entrance.

During spring break -- the week of April 1 -- the offices will merge and the new library will open in the area of new construction that connects the two schools.

A glass entryway will guide visitors to the school office, where they will check in before entering the rest of the building. The library, to the south of the office, features large glass windows that will oversee the bus drop-off area and Centennial Park.

Crews will begin painting the new offices this week, project manager George McKinnon said Wednesday.

K8 schools

Construction and remodeling are underway on East Mountain View Avenue in Longmont and on East Fifth Street in Frederick to create the St. Vrain Valley School District's new kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools, Timberline and Thunder Valley, respectively. Both schools are on schedule to open this fall.

Parents in Longmont and Frederick have expressed concern about their young children's safety, said assistant superintendent Amy Weed. But both schools are designed so that the youngest elementary students and the middle school students aren't sharing hallways or restrooms.

But each school will operate as one K-8 school, so elementary students will have expanded opportunities, such as in music or drama, she said.

At Thunder Valley, elementary students will have access to middle school science labs and the school's auditorium.

"One of the goals of a K-8 is you give younger kids those opportunities they might gain in a middle school," said director of construction Brian Lamer.

The middle school students also will have the chance to mentor younger students, Weed said.

Project Foreman Jason Terry of Malm Electrical Contractors LLC supervises the progress of electrical work during construction on the new Thunder Valley K-8 school Wednesday. To watch a video and see more photos from the project, visit www.timescall.com.
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Matthew Jonas
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"It's planned; it's structured; it's supervised," Weed said.

At the end of this school year, Spangler Elementary will close and most of its students will begin attending Timberline. Some students who attend Spangler will live in Columbine Elementary School's new attendance boundary, but have the option, like all other students, of open-enrolling into the new school.

All Frederick Elementary students will be moving to Thunder Valley K-8, which is next door in the former Frederick High School building. The elementary school's attendance boundaries remain the same, but seventh- and eighth-graders have the option of finishing middle school at Coal Ridge Middle School in Firestone.

St. Vrain Valley School District Director of Construction Brian Lamer looks over the construction progress inside the new library at the new Timberline K-8 school Wednesday.
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Matthew Jonas
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"The whole dynamic of the K-8 is super, super positive," Weed said. "When they experience it, they will never go to anything but a K-8."

Timberline K-8

Since students are still attending Heritage and Loma Linda, most of the work to create Timberline K-8 will be done over the summer, Lamer said. That will include gutting and rebuilding the interior of the schools, he said

On the Loma Linda side, for example, the office will be remodeled into a resource room, while the library will become a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) laboratory, McKinnon said.

"Timberline will be very different over the summer," Lamer said, adding that there's a lot of work to do. "We know it's going to be tough, but we're planning for it."

The library will follow the district's new bookstore model, which has been implemented at Red Hawk and Erie elementary schools.

In the bookstore model, books are grouped by topic rather than ordered by the Dewey Decimal system.

"When (elementary students) go into a library, the Dewey Decimal system doesn't make sense to them," Weed said. In the other schools, students check out more books when the library uses the bookstore model, which was developed by the district's media services coordinator, Holli Buchter.

The Timberline library will be the first where Buchter's design is implemented for sixth through eighth grades, Weed said.

Thunder Valley

The exterior of the new library is seen under construction at the new Timberline K-8 school Wednesday.
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Matthew Jonas
)

Construction is easier at Thunder Valley, since no students are in the school now, Lamer said.

The school's main entrance isn't moving but, here too, visitors will be forced to check in at the office before they can access the rest of the building.

The library, which also will use the bookstore model, will move to the front of the school, across from the office.

Workers are popping the top of the cafeteria -- lifting the roof and installing large windows to allow sunlight into the once-dark commons area.

Slanted roofs with windows also will brighten the middle school students' locker areas.

Every outer classroom is getting large new windows, while those in the school's interior will have solar tubes bringing natural light indoors.

Kindergarten classrooms are on the building's north side, with a special drop-off area for those youngest students.

"We look at those convenience things: Is it easy to get my child to class? Its it safe?" Lamer said.

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